Hello,

i am starting my first CNC Project soon and i still have some troubles how to controlling my Motors.

What i have:

Beckhoff AM8111 Motors (48V Servomotors)
Beckhoff EL7211 Ethercat Stepper Cards
Various of Ethercard IO Cards (e.g Analog Cards for Spindel, Io Cards for Switches)
(Beckhoff IPC Running Twincat PLC (Ethercat Master))
Motors managed by Beckhoff TwinCat NC


How should i managed the connection from Mach4 to TwinCat.
Is modbus fast and reliable enough to run 3 Axis + General IO Communication?

Any other ideas ?

Basti

Hello,

i am starting my first CNC Project soon and i still have some troubles how to controlling my Motors.

What i have:

Beckhoff AM8111 Motors (48V Servomotors)
Beckhoff EL7211 Ethercat Stepper Cards
Various of Ethercard IO Cards (e.g Analog Cards for Spindel, Io Cards for Switches)
(Beckhoff IPC Running Twincat PLC (Ethercat Master))
Motors managed by Beckhoff TwinCat NC


How should i managed the connection from Mach4 to TwinCat.
Is modbus fast and reliable enough to run 3 Axis + General IO Communication?

Any other ideas ?

Basti

Regarding the first question, Mach4 can communicate with TwinCAT via the EtherCAT protocol. You can use the Mach4 EtherCAT plugin to communicate with TwinCAT.

As for the second question, Modbus is a widely used protocol for communication between devices. However, it may not be the best choice for your specific application. EtherCAT is a faster and more reliable protocol than Modbus. According to a comparison between EtherCAT and Modbus, EtherCAT uses standard Ethernet frames and is embedded in standard Ethernet frames, while Modbus is a serial protocol. Therefore, EtherCAT is more suitable for real-time applications such as CNC machines.

Hi,

thanks for you feedback

It seems like, that the Ethercat Plugin "Hicon Vital Systems" only works with the HICON "Ethercat Motion Controller".  I tried to install it on my Beckhoff IPC (with running Ethercat Master).

I always get the message "No HiCon Controller Found"

I dont really want to buy this Controller, when i already have "the mother of Ethercat", an Beckhoff IPC .

Do i miss something here? Is there another Plugin which support legacy Ethercat from Beckhoff?

Best Regards

Hi,
until a couple of years ago the only way Mach4 could do Ethercat was to use a motion controller like the Hicon, as the Hicon does the realtime Ethercat comms.

Kingstar have worked with Interval Zero and NFS and now you have a fully featured Ethercat solution that does not require a motion board at all.
Automation Technologies sell a re-furbished Dell PC fitted with a high end Ethernet card and loaded with Mach4Hobby, the Kingstar Ethercat software stack and the Interval Zero RTX64
realtime core code. Costs $1800USD for the lot, that is the Mach4Hobby license, the RTX64 runtime license and the Kingstar runtime license and the PC.

https://www.automationtechnologiesinc.com/products-page/mach4-ethercat-system/cnc-ethercat-motion-control-computer

If you want genuine Ethercat and use Beckhoff IO nodes etc then this Kingstar solution is the way to go.

Is modbus fast and reliable enough to run 3 Axis + General IO Communication?

Not a snowballs chance in hell is Modbus up to that.

Craig